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Friday, November 22, 2013

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George Carew, Earl of Totnes via Wikimedia Commons

In the last part of
this post, I looked at the Irish annals and posted links to those
available online. In this post I wanted to do something pretty similar with the
Calendar of State Papers for Ireland. The CSP are ‘calendars’ in the sense that
they are chronological lists of documents or manuscripts. They contain a wealth
of information from the perspective of the English involvement in Ireland
throughout the period from 1509 to 1670. This is from the ascension of Henry
VIII, through the reigns of Edward VI, Mary I, Elizabeth I (House of Tudor),
James, I, Charles I (House of Stuart), the Commonwealth of Cromwell, and back
into the Restoration of Charles II.

Note: I’ve been unable to find a good on-line
description of the CSP, and I’m not completely sure if the volumes I’ve
presented here are the complete series. Any contributions that could clarify
this would be most welcome! As I said in the previous post – if there’s
something available on-line that I’ve missed out, please let me know and I
will update appropriately.**Update (November 23) I'm grateful to Simon Dowling for suggesting the following additions:Reports of the "Deputy Keeper of the Public Records and Keeper of the State Papers in Ireland" all online here: ... i.e. the Pipe rolls of Edward the 1st contained within the 35th report.**Update (November 25) I'm indebted to Paul Rondelez for this contribution: 'To this you could add the Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, which includes lots on Ireland. There is an older set of calendars, often with more information on the same period. The CSPI are available in full through State Papers Online. The subscription is expensive, but some libraries have them available. This collection not only has the text-searchable calendars, but also the high resolution pdf's of the actual manuscripts. These often contain very valuable information not hinted to in the calendars.'**Update (December 12) Many thanks to Donal Fallon for pointing me in the direction of Free Irish History eBooks - a fantastic resource that is well worth further investigation!

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Sunday, November 10, 2013

[** If you like this post, please make a donation to the PIPS charity using the secure button at the end. If you think it is interesting or useful, please re-share via Facebook, Google+, Twitter etc. **]for Simon 1970-2008

Preface | Sunday 10th
November 2013 (3 Days After)

I had never intended to be the author of such a
‘confessional’ blog post. Actually, for much of the gestation of this piece, I
hadn’t even intended it to be a blog post – just notes for my own amusement, to
track my mental and physical responses to this task I have set myself. Whatever
its genesis, I think there may be some slight merit in presenting it to public
view. I’m reminded of a colleague – one of my kinder, wittier detractors – who
announced to an assembled crew that my mind was an interesting place to visit,
but you wouldn’t want to live there. Well here’s your chance to have a short
break inside my head – at least you get to go home afterwards! In so far as it
goes, I’ve treated the experience as an archaeological phenomenological
research project in that it is a study of the structures of subjective
experience and consciousness when confronted with a well-defined external
objective reality – in this case putting my actual feet onto real and
independently-verifiable fire! As a research strategy, this is essentially phenomenography.
I would hold with this paradigm in my view that the ontological assumptions of
phenomenography are essentially subjectivist, but not limitless. I would argue
that different individuals will apprehend physical reality and react therein in
any number of discrete instances or responses. Some see phenomenology and, by extension,
phenomenography, as an 'anything goes' research pathway that gives credence and
validity to any old thing so long as it is claimed to be genuinely 'felt' and ‘experienced’.
Indeed, I would agree that some of the more ‘zealous’ applications of the
approach are ripe for ridicule for just being silly and relating more to the
author's ability to garner research grant money than provide any realistic data
or interpretation. That said, I would argue that the range of human emotions is
relatively small in comparison to the vastness of possibilities of the
universe. In this way, my (actor) experience describes a single data node on an
n-dimensional bell-curve of possible reactions to preparing for and executing a
firewalk. That bell curve can encompass any human emotion from paralysing fear
to complete calm and apathy. That seems a pretty wide range until you reckon
that the chances of the observer transmuting into a particularly beautiful
salmon called Gloria and pogoing away from the fire to the tune of The Jags 1979
cult classic Back of My Hand are ... let’s
say … vanishingly small. But maybe I'm not taking this particularly seriously!
I also don't have grant money and/or academic tenure riding on this! In common
with a classic phenomenographical stance, the emphasis here is on description
and record, and within that there is a tacit assumption of value in the act of
record itself. In this way, the firewalk (phenomenon) is not of itself the
object of study, but the interplay of relationships between the actor (me) and
that phenomenon. I would argue that my experiences, though conditioned by
geography and culture, are a valid proxy archive or data set when approaching and
analysing the evidence of similar experiences from the archaeological or
ethnographic record. That said, they are but one point within the available
spectrum and I would encourage others to link to records of their own experiences,
or they are welcome to submit them for publication here!

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. Photo: Firewalking Ireland

My methodology has been to write these field notes on the
day or, failing that, I’ve jotted words and phrases as reminders on any
available paper and written it up afterwards – always within 24 hours. My only
editing of this material has been to correct basics like spelling, grammar, and
(occasionally) to change sentence structure to make my meaning clearer.
Otherwise, what I present are my experiences, actions, and reactions in pretty
much the way they happened and in the order they happened. One thing I have
failed to change and correct is my wandering sense of tense. This a gross
failing in my writing and, under normal circumstances, I generally try to
eradicate it. However, in this instance, I feel that too much editing would
destroy the immediacy of the record.

Friday 25th October
2013 (14 days to go)

I’ve made jokes about treating this fire walk as form of
extreme archaeological or anthropological research. I’ve been trying to imagine
what it would be like to be a member of a past society who got the quiet word
to say ‘next time it’s your turn, mate’. From my limited reading on the subject
(Wikipedia & references therein) it appears that the fire walking has been
used as a “… rite of passage, as a test of an individual's strength and
courage, or in religion as a test of one's faith.” As something of an outsider
all of my life, I can keenly appreciate how much an individual can crave the
acceptance of the larger group. In Western society, where such social markers
are rare, I can understand the rekindling (excuse the pun!) of firewalking from
the 20th century as a means of making this form of societal display – look at
me, I’m a proper man! I’m a valuable part of my community. Admittedly, the
modern revival of firewalking has had a corporate team-building focus that has
been widely mocked, and not wholly unfairly. REM’s 1987 lyric in ‘Exhuming McCarthy’ from the Document album sums
it up rather well: ‘You're sharpening stones, walking on coals to improve your
business acumen’. Look at me I’m a good manager! … I am the very model of the
modern middle manager!

Yes, I realise I’m mocking this. But it’s a coping mechanism
- the reality is that I’m scared. I’ve undergone a number of ‘rite of passage’
rituals over the years, in various spheres of social, religious, and fraternal.
Many have been pleasant and highly anticipated (first alcoholic drink; first kiss),
others have been fraught with fear (also first kiss). But none – not even one –
have ever involved fire! My First Holy Communion would have been a very
different affair if it had included the distinct possibility of death by
immolation. For all our sophistication, civilization, and technological
advances, we’re still savannah-dwelling monkeys that at a very baseline level
know that fire is dangerous – it can hurt, it can destroy, and it can kill. But
if we could just conquer it – even for a little while – we can become Prometheus
the Titan. Stealing fire from the gods doesn’t just possess the idea of making
us masters of our own human fate – it allows us to feel like gods too. In the
midst of the fire we are unburnt and immortal – we are cut off from such pesky
human frailties as pain, age, disease, and death. Humans can’t survive inside
the fire, therefore, if you walk unhurt on the fire you are not human – you’re
a god. Wow! I’m totally over-thinking this, aren’t I?

I’m sitting in my room in the Glasshouse hotel in Sligo on an
overcast Friday afternoon. I’m here for the Archaeology of Gatherings
conference, hosted by the Archaeology Department at IT Sligo. Pre-conference
drinks and meet up won’t start until later this evening, but I got into town
before midday. Partly this is because I’m incredibly excited about this
conference – the topic is hugely fascinating to me – but I also wanted to renew
my acquaintance with some of the historic buildings of the town. I’ve not been
in Sligo since the early 1990s and I have fond memories of wandering around
Sligo Abbey [also: here] and St John the Baptist Cathedral. No less than my
expectation of meeting up with old friends and former colleagues, I wished to
renew my acquaintance with these historic sites. Unfortunately, the Abbey
appears to have been locked up for the season, and St. John’s isn’t open to
visitors on a Friday. Moreover, the ruined Friary church is locked and
inaccessible. Even the County Museum is closed for renovations until February
of next year. Right now, after tramping all across the town, I’m soothing my
rather sore Hobbit feet, contemplating what foot-related pain my near future
holds.

While I keep telling myself that I’m engaged in
archaeological research, I’m becoming acutely aware that I lack the theoretical
framework and linguistic toolkit to properly analyse my experiences and
emotions. Stuart Rathbone (of Campaign for Sensible Archaeology fame) has
suggested that I carry thermometers while I walk, but I don’t think that’s an
option. In the face of this, I’m very much tempted to keep these notes private
and unpublished as they must represent the ruminations of an anthropological
subject, rather than the overarching vision of the paternalistic and all-seeing
social scientist-observer. I’m over-thinking this again, aren’t I?

Well, if these are going to be field notes, let them be the
field notes of the self-assessing subject. The first thing I’ve got to
establish is what’s my buy-in to all this? Where’s my centre of belief in this
process? As I’ve stated in a recent blog post, I honestly and fully believe
that the PIPS charity [Website | Facebook | Twitter] do good work and should be
funded. If it takes me – literally and figuratively – walking across hot coals
to prove that, then that’s what I’ve signed up to do. I’m putting my money
where my mouth is … except with money from donations … and my feet instead of
my mouth … but you know what I mean!

So … let’s talk about feelings … well … now … this is
difficult! … as a confirmed straight white guy, this is not coming easily to
me! OK … time to man up and talk about those feelings! Fear! … that’s the first
word that came to mind – I’m scared. In the first instance I’m scared of
getting physically hurt. I’m also scared of ‘wussing out’ and not being able to
meet this challenge – I’m scared of not being able to live up to the promise
I’ve made. I’m feeling like a bit of a fraud. People believe in me and trusted
me when I said I’d do this – they believe in me to the tune of over £500. If I
don’t do this, I may not be expected to give back the money, but I’d better not
go looking for charitable donations any time soon! For all this fear, it’s not
omnipresent – it’s a background level of terror that I can deal with.
Admittedly, there are spikes of fear, panic, and alarm. For example, when I
search YouTube for ‘firewalk’ and find that the most popular videos are all of
firewalks going disastrously wrong! Friends and colleagues finding wellsprings
of humour and jest in my predicament comes a close second – thanks guys! For
the most part, I’d describe what I’m experiencing as ‘anticipation’ … I’d maybe
coin a phrase of ‘strong anticipation’. There is fear, but it is tempered with
firmly-held notions that what I’m doing is right.

I’m also finding great comfort in other people who have
committed to this project. Two guys who sit near me have also volunteered to do
this. Up until this point, I can’t say I’ve known either of them particularly
well. We’re not anonymous to each other - we’d normally say ‘hi’ and have brief
chats about the usual range of things: kids, coffee breaks and ‘isn’t today
just dragging/flying?’ In this we’re not too different from other passing
acquaintances in a large group. But that’s beginning to change. It’s not like
we’re hanging out all the time, or inviting each other round to our houses
after work, but there is a perceptible difference in our relationships. My
conversations with each of these guys appear to be slightly more frequent than
before and about topics deeper than usual. At the simplest level, we’ve been
talking about how we feel about the impending firewalk. It’s negotiated through
humour, but there is an edge of gravity to the discourse that is lacking in similar
conversations with other friends and colleagues. These are simple, one-to-one
discussions where our fears are acknowledged and some degree of mutual support
is offered. Outside of this I’ve found much unexpected comfort in contact I’ve
had with other people who have not done a similar firewalk, but who share a
‘buy-in’ to the topic of mental health. At its simplest level, a number of
people have responded to my appeal for donations for a suicide and mental
health charity by also confiding in me about their own experiences – either
family or personal – with these issues. I don’t know how analogous this aspect
of my experience is with my imagined individual in a traditional society,
contemplating their own rite of passage ceremony. All I can report is that,
while some of these stories have been heartbreaking and incredibly difficult
for me to come to terms with, I have felt extremely honoured that people have
chosen to relate them to me. Some people have told me that they feel better
after speaking or writing to me. I genuinely hope that there has been some
healing for those that have needed it. For me, I feel that I have received a
gift more valuable than any donations – inspiration. I’ve had my resolve
strengthened – what I am doing is a good thing. I’ve not met the majority of
these people – they’re Facebook friends, Twitter followers, +Google
acquaintances – yet their trust in me and in the charity I support has created
a sense of a shared goal – even an odd sense of community. As I walk I will
carry these stories with me – I’m no longer walking just for myself or for the
more nebulous idea of the PIPS charity organisation – I’m walking for real
people with real problems, hoping to provide real help. ‘Though I walk through
the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil’ … ok … it’s all turning
biblical, so best to end my field note here and get ready to have some drinks
with the conference delegates.

I’m back home in Belfast. The conference was wonderful – a
great range of speakers and topics – and I hope to write a synopsis of it for
my blog before too long. Today I received an email from the HR department
inviting all the volunteers to a ‘Firewalk pre event’. This will comprise a
meal and photography session. The invitation explicitly states that the purpose
of the exercise is to ‘provide us all with the opportunity to get to know each
other’. We will also learn more about the structure of the evening ahead of us
and we will travel together to the PEC building at Queen’s University. In the
terms of what I’ve learned from Dr Jonathan Lanman’s (Institute of Cognition
and Culture, QUB) lecture (Ritual and Divergent Modes of Cohesion) at the
weekend, this can be broken down into Dysphoria, Synchrony, and Signalling.
Signalling is the showing of allegiance to the group – turning up for the meal,
listening to the instruction. Synchrony is the unison of movement – the
organisation of lifts and shared cars bringing us from the office building to
the location of the fire pit. Then there’s the Dysphoria … the pain, fear, and
anxiety. Through these shared experiences, we will – I hope – develop some form
of ‘group identification’. I’m going to leave these thoughts of pain and
anxiety for a lyric from Bob Dylan’s 1986 album Knocked Out Loaded. The album, as a whole, is almost unrelentingly
terrible, but the rambling epic ‘Brownsville Girl’ is among the finest pieces
he’s ever written: ‘Strange how people who suffer together have stronger
connections than people who are most content’.

Wednesday 30th
October 2013 (8 days to go)

It turns out that one of the chaps whom I believed had
signed up for the firewalk isn’t coming with us. He’d talked about it. He’d
intended to sign up … but between one thing and another, it just never
happened. He’s wished me well, but he’ll not be there on the night. Part of me
thinks that I should feel outraged and betrayed by this but, surprisingly, I’m
not. I’ve been trying to think why this should be … perhaps it is that this
endeavour is still embedded in my mind as a solitary undertaking, and not yet a
group activity. Realistically, I think that the answer may lie somewhere in the
realms that all my ponderings about bonds of mutual support are mental hot air.
I’m just surrounded by some really good people who are full of kindness and
compassion. At a deeper level, I’m intrigued that I appear to have construed
greater bonds between myself and these guys that may actually exist. Is this a
deep-seated psychological need to forge relationships as coping mechanisms … or
am I just an over-analysing loon? I fear that the answer is a hearty yes … to
both. However, I refuse to be put off by this and I now realise that I simply
cannot complete these field notes without quoting the Band of Brothers speech
from Henry V … so I may as well get it out of my system now!

The big day is only one week away! I’ve emailed one of the
organisers to ask about appropriate clothing for the event … I wanted to get
some ideas on whether I should be clad in a T-shirt and rolled-up jeans or if I
should see about digging out a pair of my old shorts and seeing if I can still
fit into them … it may not be a pretty sight! Somehow I’m reminded of Flann O’Brien’s description of Finn Mac Cool in At Swim Two Birds: “Three fifties of fosterlings could engage with handball
against the wideness of his backside, which was large enough to halt the march
of men through a mountain-pass.” I’m really torn … there’s part of my mind
that’s bathing this in multiple layers of the sweetest ‘ritual’ and mentally
oohing and aahing at the significance of everything: ‘I’m even approaching the
selection of garments in a ritualised manner … wow!’ Thankfully, a larger part
of my mind is overruling this as nonsense and telling me that I need to get out
more. I’d already planned to get a haircut this weekend – because I need one,
not because it’s a ritual preparation/cleansing, or any form of symbolic act.
For all that, I’m intrigued by how much this sort of nonsense is occupying me!
Obviously it’s a form of displacement activity to keep my tiny monkey brain
occupied and not thinking about what’s bothering me. Under normal
circumstances, I’d say it was the impending firewalk – I may have mentioned it
before! Though today I’m not so sure … I appear to have gotten lyrics from
Duran Duran’s 1985 ‘View to a Kill’ stuck in my head and they just wont leave
me alone!: ‘Until we dance into the fire | That fatal kiss is all we need |
Dance into the fire | To fatal sounds of broken dreams | Dance into the fire |
That fatal kiss is all we need | Dance into the fire’.

You’re welcome!

Saturday November 2nd
2013 (5 days to go)

This is obviously biting deep into my subconscious. The
dreams have started. Last night I saw myself on the edge of the fire pit.
Everything was quiet and still and I was just waiting for the right moment to
step forward. I had no fear even though there were flames leaping as high as I
am tall. In the dream I didn’t see myself walking across, but I knew it was all
going to be alright. It was at this point I woke up. All was quiet in the house
and I could hear the cat snoring gently on the bed as he attempted to syphon
off my warmth. I was filled with lightness and joy – such positive feelings
that everything was going to go well. I turned over and went back to sleep,
filled with positivity and contemplating the powerful symbolic and healing
properties of dreams.

I awake several hours later. I’ve been dreaming that giant
pizzas have been falling from the sky and landing in random East Belfast
gardens. The PSNI arrive at each scene and cordon each one of ‘for safety
reasons’, but I’ve a nagging suspicion that they’re only doing it so other
people can’t get free sky-falling pizza. The officers in my dream appear happy
and particularly well-fed. Obviously, I am no longer convinced about the importance
of dreams in this process.

Leaving the office this evening I saw someone waiting for
the lift, carrying a small bale of T-shirts. It took a second to recognise the
‘feet within feet’ logo in black on a white background (as opposed to seeing it
every day on the posters, where it is done in appropriate flame-like shades of
yellows, reds, and oranges). Suddenly this seems much ‘realer’ than it had
before – no fear, only exuberance and enthusiasm!

No problem! Photo: Geoff McHugh

Tuesday November 5th
2013 (2 days to go)

Well, the numbers of emails are certainly increasing! It had
started as a trickle, but it’s becoming a flood – when & where we’ll meet,
what we’ll eat, what to wear (trousers that can be rolled up are best, apparently
… though it’s not like I had my heart set on sauntering across the coals in a
tight cocktail dress (think: Melanie Griffith in Working Girl), where to bring
our sponsorship money, timing of our walks – all the important minutia – all
making the event, which had up until now seemed quite ‘theoretical’ and somehow
ephemeral, a more concrete and physical reality.

All this this thinking of Melanie Griffith reminds me of the
theme song from the movie:

It’s Tuesday evening and I’ve just finished tucking my
children into bed. My eldest son, Bertie, has gotten over his disappointment
that his Thursday swimming lesson has been cancelled to facilitate me doing
this firewalk. He’s obviously been thinking about this and asked me numerous
questions, including if my trousers will get burnt (I’ll roll up the legs), if
my shoes will get burnt (I won’t be wearing shoes), if my socks will get burnt.
It was only with the last one that the realisation set in: Bertie: ‘But Dada!
You’ll be in bare feet! Won’t you get burnt?’ I had a choice to make – be
honest or go with ‘I’m magic’. Even though I’d have preferred him to slope of
quietly to sleep, I felt that he needed some reassurance on this matter. I bit
the bullet and went the truthful route – I may have used the word ‘physics’ a
trifle too often, but I held back and only used ‘thermal conductivity’ once,
and ‘Leidenfrost effect’ not at all. I ended by saying ‘I promise you – the
Physics is robust – I’m not going to get hurt!’ He looked totally awed and
asked if he could come and watch the event. For a child who’s, at times, not
desperately keen to leave the house or look up from his iDevice, this was a
huge win for me.

Here we go again! Photo: Geoff McHugh

I’ve wondered about the actual value of keeping these field
notes as my experiences and thought patterns as a 21st century Western
European, must differ from my hypothetical acolyte in a traditional society.
The block characterisation of all people about to engage in this form of rite
of passage as some form of homogenised, stylised, and stereotypical ‘other’ is,
of course, a fabrication that reveals more about my cultural biases, than it
reflects on any external reality. In the face of this, what degree of
commonality can we expect across the centuries? Is there any real connection or
parallel between me today in Belfast and anyone, anywhere, anywhen, who has confronted
any upcoming rite of passage type event – whether or not fire is involved? It’s
not like there were ever too many !Kung bushmen scanning YouTube for
instructional videos before they stepped into the fire. I’ve been leaning
towards the idea that broad feelings of anxiety, fear, and anticipation must translate
across time, culture, and geography. Now I know that there has to be more that
transcends the ages – as I looked into my son’s eyes, filled with awe and
wonder at the thoughts of this magical task that his otherwise boring and
ordinary father was going to perform – I felt connected to every other parent
who (no matter how fleetingly) was regarded as a little like a god by their children.
I’ve glimpsed it before as I’ve made a small toy or piece of chocolate appear
from behind an apparently unencumbered ear. But this was different – bigger,
louder, more powerful, and it filled me with belief. The differences in time,
place, and culture are such that we will all have differing personal responses
to that. For me, as I turned off the light and told my son how much I love him,
this was this song that was running through my head as I shadow-boxed my way
down the stairs:

Obviously we’re all preparing for this differently. I’m, it
can be safely established, am obsessing and over thinking. Everyone else I
speak to seems quietly confident. One person – who’s either a lying toad of the
most chilled man in the world – tells me that until he saw a couple of us
discussing car parking arrangements and looking at Google Maps to plot the best
route to the event site he hadn’t given the whole firewalking thing much
thought. I think he may be the most relaxed man I’ve ever met!

That aside, there’s nothing much to report – I’ve been
trying to orchestrate a final push to secure donations raised quite a few extra
pounds over the course of the evening. Despite my two sons doing a chant of
‘Dada’s going to die in the fire’ (words were had!), I had a very pleasant,
peaceful, and clam evening. I had a rather nice glass of wine and an early
night. No firewalking (or pizza falling) dreams to relate.

Thursday November 7th
2013 (Firewalk Day)

MorningI’m initially surprised at how calm and relaxed I feel.LunchtimeI
volunteered to stand at the entrance to my building and hold a collection
bucket. The last time I did anything like this was in the 1990s … it was a
World Cup year and I had volunteered to help out doing a charity collection through several Galway pubs in the
half-time interval and after the Ireland vs. Mexico game (I think). The Irish side lost
and I received more moans and bitter recriminations than cash. I’m as guilty as
the next person of passing by a street collector and looking busy or distracted
… or just happen to be checking my phone and failed to notice them. What I’ve
never felt is the degree of invisibility that the person holding the
bucket experiences, seeing this hundreds or thousands of times in a day. I’ve
reached the firm conclusion that, should I ever need to flee the attentions of
the police, I won’t try get on a boat, sneak on to a plane, or even head for
the border using only back roads. I’m going to grab a bucket and help out my
nearest charity – they’ll never catch me! Seriously though – I’m exceptionally
grateful to everyone who has contributed either directly to my collection page,
or into the bucket in the foyer!

Outside of this, my preparation has been listening to The
Beach Boys classic 1966 album Pet Sounds
on repeat for most of the day. I know of no other album that brings me such
sustained peace and calm with each and every listen. It has seen me through
some seriously bad times – for me it’s just ‘music than makes things better’ - it is music that heals. I
remember reading a story about how Brian Wilson meditated before recording the
track God Only Knows, visualising a
bright halo of light above his head as he sang. Maybe there’s something in it –
I certainly feel peace and light as I listen to that song in particular.

4pm

All the walkers are invited to the canteen for a pizza and
salad dinner. I don’t particularly know anyone here, so I’m initially standing
alone, observing, though I can feel that my heart rate is considerably
elevated. Once we’re offered food, I feel quite a bit of the tension break. We
find seats, introduce ourselves and make some polite conversation. There is a
well-attested bond created in the ‘breaking of bread’ that stretches from the
religious sphere right down to the physical and prosaic act of sharing a bite
to eat together. You could see this process in action as we ate, drank and
relaxed. For me, this feeling of unity and camaraderie broke down somewhat as
we divvied up the cars – who needed lifts and who would travel with whom. I’d
already arranged to meet my support club – my wife and sons – outside the
building and we’d all travel down there together. As we made our way through
the rush hour traffic we were frequently alongside (but more often slightly
behind) one of my colleagues who had elected to walk to the site. Despite the
physical distance – and the fact that she was not aware we were keeping pace
with her – it engendered in me a feeling of togetherness and being part of a
team that were going to undertake this task. Even in spite of the numpty who
pulled out into the traffic directly in front of me, this feeling of community
– and the very calm and positive effects of having my family with me – allowed
me to get to the fire site with my personal calm and peace (largely) intact.

6pm

After arriving at the PEC complex at Queen’s University we
meet up with a fellow walker and her husband – old friends of our family – and
we wander about looking for where we’re meant to go. After Candace Weddle’s (Anderson University South Carolina, USA) presentation
to the Archaeology of Gatherings conference (Blood, Fire and Feasting: The Sensory Experience of Greco-Roman
Sacrifice) I’m particularly attuned to recording the ephemeral, and easily
ignored, aural and olfactory experiences of the event. Coming to it from a
distance, there is a slight, but increasing, scent of wood smoke. At first it
is very faint and intermittent and when I eventually make the connection ‘this
is for us!’ it injects a noticeable frisson of excitement and I feel my heart
rate soar.

After spotting a few (now) familiar faces hanging about the
foyer of the PEC building, we congregate for a bit and start to form a crowd. A
man from the PIPS charity greets us and gets us moving towards one of the
meeting rooms on the fourth floor. At first this seems to be quite a
‘corporate’ experience – we’re told to line up, sign up, and take a number.
This will be our ticket for when it’s our turn to firewalk. I’m immediately
struck by the thought that any ‘indigenous’ firewalker today wouldn’t be
approaching it in this way and my hypothetical ‘ancient acolyte’ would
certainly not see the point in this regimented procedure. Eventually the guy
from Firewalking Ireland [Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter] comes in to talk to us. He seems to be an amiable chap
– very enthusiastic and slightly sooty. He gives us ‘The Talk’. The fire is
real | This is potentially very dangerous | You still have the opportunity to
back out now | You can get hurt. There is no soft-sell here – only harsh truths
– and it’s sobering. The embers will be between 400°C and 600°C (752-1112°F).
To put this in context: Every Ray Bradbury fan knows that the flashpoint of
normal cellulose-based paper is 451°F (233°C) and even lead melts at 621.5°F
(327.5°C). A couple of mental calculations along this line are enough to give
pause to even the most enthusiastic. Our guy asks us to demonstrate our
eagerness for the firewalk by either remaining seated (Not sure I want to do
this now) to standing on your chair (Can’t wait! Let’s go!). A couple of hardy
souls were up on those chairs in the blink of an eye and some were firmly
seated. One person who has stayed seated told me later that, if truth be told,
she’d have crawled under her chair to demonstrate her lack of willingness at
that point. Just for the record – I was found in a hunched position, hovering a
couple of inches above the chair. While the guy from PIPS had us queue up along
the edge of two large tables to sign, the Firewalking Ireland instructor passes
out pre-cut boards (roughly 18x10 inches) of quarter-inch chipboard to use as
rests so we could read, sign, and witness our declarations that we had been
told the dangers, we were doing this willingly, and (most importantly) we’d not
hold them liable for any physical or mental trauma suffered. You could feel the
temperature in the room and the rumble of chit chat just drop as people got on
with the job of reading, coupled with the realisation of what we were letting
ourselves in for. I’ll not give all the guy’s patter and approach away, but we
each wound up taking our boards up to the top of the room, placing the edges
between the two tables, visualising our goals, and breaking that bugger in two
with a single well-aimed thump. Some of us had difficulties, but for me I can
tell you that I saw my goal and shattered that board. By the time I left that
room I was ready for anything. Most especially, I was convinced that I was
going to do the firewalk – I would succeed. The blood was pumping in my veins
and I was psyched!

Really getting to like this! Photo: Geoff McHugh

7pm

A short walk later and I was out in the cold back car park
of the PEC. I was still going to do this, but I was also pretty convinced that
I was going to do it once and go home. As we had walked towards the fire pit
the smell of the smoke increased in strength. Right up close you could feel the
heat and every so often – when the breeze changed direction – my eyes stung
from the smoke. Again our instructor reminded us that it wasn’t too late to
walk away and that the coals would be in the range from 400-600°C. A voice
behind me, in a low, mournful sigh muttered ‘would you ever stop saying that?’ After just a few minutes of preparation we
found ourselves shimmying out of shoes, socks, coats, and hats and lining up in
a bit of a scrum to take our turn to go across – all thoughts of an orderly,
numbered, and ticketed crossing was long forgotten. I’m pretty short and was
situated in the middle of the group, so I couldn’t see the first few people
walk across, only hearing the pulsing cheers of the crowd as each walker took
their turn. Soon enough I was at the top of the list and about to take my first
step. The cheering crowd seemed oppressively loud and the heat and smoke seemed
to choke me.

I waited.

Over the last few weeks I had attempted to visualise what
this moment would feel like and had imagined two things. First was going to be
the signature Hitchcock dolly counter zoom (as seen in Vertigo, but arguably better known from Spielberg’s Jaws). The second thing I expected was
for everything to go slow-mo (think: the explosions in Swordfish or The Hurt Locker
where normal reality slows down at moments of trauma and distress). I had
chided myself that these were cinematic conceits and this was real life – the
two don’t match up. On the other side, I have wondered if the reason these are
frequently-used techniques is actually tied to their being the nearest visual
representations of real life experiences in traumatic situations. I don’t know
how long I waited – it was probably only a couple of seconds. After one deep
breath to steady myself, I put out a foot and went for it.

I walked.

I’m finding it difficult to put my experience at this point
into words. The fire pit was 4m long and takes approximately five seconds to
cross. Depending on the person, it equates to between four and six steps –
from the video footage, it appears to have taken me either four or five steps.
I clearly remember my surroundings at the moment I took that first step – the
heat, the noise, the smells, even the feel of the damp grass beneath my feet.
But as soon as I stepped into the fire all that changed. It wasn’t quite the
cinematic dolly shot, but I was immediately aware of being in a blurry bubble.
From that point on I have no memory of smell and neither sight nor sound
outside my bubble. I could not see the massed supporters – everything was
concentrated on the area inside my personal globe of quiet, still calm. I was
no longer part of a team – I was just one little fat man on his own inside the
fire. Even my sense of touch was reduced down to the soles of my feet – I was
aware that I was standing on something hot, but that was it. The classic
slow-mo time slowing to a crawl thing both did and didn’t happen for me – and
this is what I’m having difficulty finding the words to explain. It’s like
there were two simultaneous realities that started off together and ended
together, but in the middle created a wide divergence. In one the walk was over
in a millisecond and I was standing on the cool damp grass on the far side of
the fire pit just after having taken my first step. In the other reality time
slowed down to a trickle and I had the opportunity to look about and experience
each slow, ponderous footfall as I made my way across at glacial speed. I could
see each individual glowing ember and I could distinctly hear my feet hiss with
every step I took. I looked down and in that moment I was suddenly flooded by
all the stories that had brought me to this place – all those who donated
money, or wished me well – but most of all I thought of all those who had
shared their own personal stories of loss and heartbreak. Reading back over my
earlier notes, I see that I used the phrase ‘As I walk I will carry these
stories with me’. That was how I thought it would be. I was wrong. In that
moment I was the one being carried – the faith and trust placed in me to
receive these stories was sustaining me, motivating me, and moving me. I felt
something truly powerful right there and I let out an involuntary scream as I
punched the air with the classic ‘metal devil horns’ hand signal – it wasn’t a
scream of pain or alarm, it was a shout of joy – it was a yell of ecstasy – it was
my barbaric yawp sounding across the roofs of the world – I had faced my fears
and now here I was standing inside the fire – unburnt and unhurt. For a
fleeting second I felt almost god-like.

It felt like a punch. But only if the punch came from a
giant jelly fist that hit my entire body all at once. I was standing on the
other side of the fire pit, almost not sure how I got there. I’d been in the
fire for no time and for ages simultaneously. The feeling of being punched was
the two divergent timelines snapping back together with an angry crack at
having been so rudely interrupted. Suddenly the roar of the crowd was back, and
with it the feel of the breeze, the smell of the fire, even the slight taste of
ash in my mouth. I walked off to one side to make way for the next walker. As I
scanned the sea of faces for sight of my family I felt the rise of the
strangest sensation. I’d been expecting this – to a certain extent. Seeing as
I’m relying on cinematic references to illustrate my points, I’ll direct the
reader to the scene in Highlander when Christopher Lambert, playing Connor
MacLeod, defeats Iman Fasil in the car park under the Garden. There’s the thunder and the lightning and the roar as power flows through his body. Unfortunately,
I couldn’t summon up the special effects, but I did feel a huge surge in
endorphins – I entered a euphoric state and only wanted one thing – to walk
through the fire again.

After finally spotting my family in the throng of supporters,
I made my way back to the line of waiting walkers. Keeping my eye on my loved
ones, I strode boldly through the flames and out the other side. Without
breaking step I continued on to my family, only to find my eldest son in floods
of tears. I though that these tears were for me and I tried to comfort him that
I was perfectly fine and unhurt. I was soon brought back to earth when I
discovered that his tears were actually for the fact that his iDevice had lost
power just as he was trying to get a video of me stepping through the coals. As
I walked, he was looking down trying to get it to work and he missed the lot.
Worse than that – the first time I’d done it he’d been enveloped in the crowd
and hadn’t seen it either. There was only one thing for it! I’m back at the
fire. I shout over to Bertie: ‘Can you see me? I’m doing this one just for
you!’ … and away I march again! It was at this point that Oscar looks at me
with his big brown eyes, juts out his lip and says ‘you didn’t do one for me’ …
that’s why I did it a fourth time. The fifth time was just for fun and because
five feels like a more mystical number than four. With each walk the experience
was slightly different, but largely the same for me – sometimes it felt that
the emphasis was on the brevity of the experience, while in others it was more
focused on looking at my feet and examining the embers in minute detail. But in
all cases I felt accompanied and carried through by all those who had invested
– both financially and emotionally – in me, in this charity, and in this
endeavour. As I have made clear throughout, these are my experiences alone and
I make no claims to universality. For me, all I can tell you is that I loved it
and, had they let me, I’d have kept going until the dim light of dawn. Some
people did their one trip across and that was enough – I say ‘fair play’ to
them. There was one person who has my undying respect and admiration. I don’t
know who they are, but my memory is that they seemed to be always around the
start of the fire pit, but never making it across. So many times they walked up,
looked, and left – just couldn’t take that first Indiana Jones-like leap from the lion’s head. I felt for that person and I know that had I lost my nerve at
the beginning, I could not have gone back a second time. But that person tried
and tried and tried. At the very last minute, when the organisers were
preparing to put out the fire, they found their courage and went for it and
succeeded! Every person in the assembled crowd cheered and none louder than I!

It was only on the walk back to the car, as the endorphins
or adrenaline or whatever it was started to ebb, that I first started to feel
pain. By the time I got home, and got my feet into the bath for a soak, they
had taken up a dull thudding pulse of heat and mild pain.

9pm

My eldest son is still annoyed that he didn’t capture my
awesomeness (my term, not his) on video. Thankfully, my wife did and we’ve had
to promise to forward it to him. I’ve uploaded it to YouTube for your viewing
pleasure: here. As I was putting him to bed, he asked if I was going to do it
next year. I said a pretty firm ‘no’. Then he asked: but what if they do
another one in 2015? Would you do it then?’ … well, yes, then I just might!

Friday November 8th
2013 (The Day After)

I’ve been awake since 5am. I have no memory of having any
firewalk-induced dreams, but I can’t get to sleep again. Every time I do I see
the events of last night replayed again and again in slow motion. For the first
time in over 20 years I see the sunrise while not behind the wheel, driving to
another cold field in the search for archaeology. My feet tingle – not a
pins-and-needles tingle, and not in pain, just a light happy ‘I’ve got a
serious buzz going on’ kinda tingle. For that matter my hands are tingling too.
It appears that I can’t stop smiling.

My clothes from last night are in the washing hamper and
even passing by at the distance of a couple of feet, they still smell strongly
of smoke. The strength of the scent to trigger memories is quite amazing and,
for a moment, I’m back there on the coals and loving it! Still thinking of Candace
Weddle’s meditation on The Sensory
Experience of Greco-Roman Sacrifice, it suddenly strikes me that there must
have been the same moment in ancient Rome when someone walked by the carelessly
heaped pile of togas and suddenly, forcefully remembered the previous night’s
burnt offerings to the gods!

At work there’s much interest from colleagues keen to check
that we’re not too crispy. Lots of
questions of ‘how was it?’ and ‘what did it feel like?’ Like any form of
ritualised rite of passage, there can be no easy explanation of what happened
to those who did not make the journey with us. All I can do is tell anyone who’ll
listen – if you get the opportunity, go do it – you’ll have an amazing time!
But here’s the thing – you’ll have your amazing time filled with all your personal moments of certainty and
doubt. Things I found easy, maybe you’ll find them difficult. The converse is
also true: things I found hard, you could find not to be problematic. The
essential thing is that it is you
that will find these things and they will belong to you.

A view from above. Photo: Naga Ganja

Saturday November 9th
2013 (2 Days After)

Everything’s back to normal – or at least my version of it!
Feet have stopped hurting and I can now speak without constantly smiling.

Insofar as I’m capable of deep though, I’ve been reflecting
on my experiences. First of all, the worst part is definitely the waiting – I imagined
everything that could go wrong would go wrong – often spectacularly. In many
respects, the easy bit was the firewalk itself. No – I’ll correct that! The
first step was pretty difficult. But once you put that foot down and realised
that it wasn’t going to kill you, it was much better … the second and subsequent
steps were the easy bit! Despite what I said to my son, I’d definitely be happy
to do it again and sooner than 2015. I also now see why firewalking has become
such a popular corporate tool. Some of the people who walked that night, I’d
only met for the first time at the meal beforehand; some are colleagues I see
every day. But none of them could I have said that I knew pretty well. It seems
ridiculous in some respects – we went to a cold car park, took off our shoes,
and walked through the coals, there is no actual indication of superior moral
worth in any of this, but I feel that I know them better and trust them more. I
know I’ll talk to them more often, value their opinion more and, if it’s within
my power to do so, go the extra mile to bring them help and assistance. After all,
we did the impossible – we walked through fire together!

As I’m bringing these notes to a close, it’s appropriate that
I offer acknowledgment and thanks. First it’s got to be the people at ANIbody, my
workplace charity, who instigated all this and put in so much effort in turning
a good idea into an actual thing. To the PIPS Charity – they do such good work
in the service of a difficult cause. I’m glad to be associated with them and
hope that the money and awareness I’ve helped to raise will do some real good
in our communities. The guys at Firewalking Ireland have my huge thanks and
respect – they organised an exceptional event that was well-structured, well-planned,
and well-executed to ensure that all walkers and watchers were safe and fully
informed. Any yet, they still managed to make me, at least, feel that the
modern constraints of health-and-safety were not so overpowering as to remove
the feeling of ‘specialness’ of the event. I can heartily recommend them for
all your firewalking needs! Stuart Rathbone also deserves a mention here. In a recent interview he lists meeting me – and my willingness to facilitate his excellent papers on this blog – as a highlight of his career in archaeology. It goes the other way, too - without Stuart's willingness to publish his work here, I may not have read, or been so strongly influenced by, his paper on mental health issues in Irish archaeology, which set me thinking about mental health issues more generally, eventually leading me to take action in the form of volunteering for this firewalk. My family are wonderful and I love them very much. They
deserve my thanks for going along with my craziness – both general and specific
to this firewalk. In my moments of fear, panic, and self-doubt they were there
to comfort and support me. More than that they stood in a cold car park in
south Belfast on a dark Thursday night to watch me go through with this –
supporting me all the way and experiencing this event with me. My final thanks
go to those who donated cash, offered good wishes, and believed in me enough to
share their stories and their pain. Thank you all of you – you carried me
through!

Triptych of my first firewalk. Photo: David Hyland.

Same moment as before, but I think it captures my emotional
changes very well from grim determination, through an involuntary
scream, and into pure joy and happiness. Photo: Richard Hetherington.

Notes

The JustGiving page I set up to solicit and collect donations
will remain open until February 2014. If you would like to make a donation to
this very worthy cause, please click here or use the button below. If you are
reading this after that date, but would still like to donate directly to the
charity they may be found here: [Website | Facebook | Twitter].

If you’ve got photos from the night that you’d like to
share, send me a link in the comments and I’ll happily add them.

The title of this post is taken from the song ‘Criminals’ by
The Tallest Man on Earth. If Scandinavian singer-songwriters are your thing,
then there’s a good chance you’ll already know his work. For everyone else:
give his stuff a listen - you may just enjoy it!

In doing what may be lightly described as ‘research’ for
this piece, I encountered the Hip-Hop Shakespeare Company. It may not be
Shakespeare as I’m familiar with it, but it’s well worth a watch!

In the interests of fairness, and general
politically-correctness, I should point out that there are probably many, many
lesbians of African origin that find it difficult to articulate their feelings –
the straight white guys don’t own that market, despite what our stereotypes
suggest!

I keep meaning to mention this, and here's as good a place as any. My favourite song in the world isThe Jags'Back of My Hand. When my time comes, can someone please arrange to have this played at my funeral? - Loud!